Learning a musical instrument such like guitar can be quite a challenge. Such a challenge can be considered as even more important when it relates to learning the theoretical various aspects of music such as the mathematical relations of the notes, and the asymmetric alphabetical and solfege systems of music.
There are several difficulties that can be encountered with the conventional notation system and the tablature for the guitar. Firstly, there are multiple locations for a given note. For each note on the musical staff there can be up to five locations for it on the guitar (see FIG. 1)). Each note location is visually unique. On the piano there are only 12 unique notes, each visually obvious due to its location in relationship to the repeating pattern of black and white keys (see FIG. 2). On a guitar fretboard there are up to 144 unique notes that must be memorized, with almost no visual patterns to help. These two problems compound each other and make note location by letter name extremely difficult for beginners.
There are also further difficulties that can be encountered by guitar players concerning the classical notation system. For example, in the asymmetric lettering system, there are twelve notes in the western musical system, all of which are represented with only seven letters, from A to G. This creates asymmetric distance patterns between the letters, making these relationships necessary to memorize on a case by case basis.
A scale is a selection of seven notes out of the twelve, using one of every letter from A to G. These notes must follow a specific pattern of ‘half-steps’ and ‘whole-steps’ from any specific starting note. For example, a major scale starting on A would be A B C# D E F# G#, and starting on B would be B C# D# E F# G# A#. Since there are 15 different keys, each with 7 notes, a student must memorize 105 different pieces of information. A Chord is a specific selection of three notes out of the seven in the scale. Each scale has seven chords. Thus, at three notes per chord×seven chords per key×15 keys=305 items and note locations to memorize. Major, Minor and Diminished chords are created by changing the distance relationships between the three notes in the chord. Because of the asymmetric nature of the conventional system, these relationships are not alphabetically consistent. For example, if every other letter is picked twice from any starting point (A C E), a chord is created. In this case, the distances between A C and E create a minor chord. If C, E and G are chosen, even though the alphabetical relationships are the same, the uneven distribution of sharps (#) and flats (b) make this chord major, while the notes B D F create a diminished chord. B D# F# would create a major chord. These three basic qualities further complicate a beginners work.
For someone learning the classical notation system, there are no obvious theoretical information. To derive any theoretical information from notation, in terms of chord tones, scale degrees, harmonic function etc, a student must usually be very advanced, (for example, at least 3rd level conservatory theory, or university). This means all beginner students miss this extremely valuable part of the learning process, and this slows the speed of learning considerably because they lack the framework on which they will organize what they learn.
Tablature is by far the most popular method that student guitarists use to learn music. Tablature provides only fret and string number information on a time axis. This allows the student to play the song only mechanically and only exactly as it's written down on that particular tablature. Like notation, this means the student has absolutely no understanding how the song is working theoretically and structurally. They will be unable to play the song in a different location on the guitar or in a different key. The nature of tablature drastically increases the amount of information the student must process to arrive at the same result. This makes the educational value of tablature extremely limited.